


Atticus

by sazzafraz



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 21:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sazzafraz/pseuds/sazzafraz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which everything is funny and weird until it really, really isn't anymore. Or alternativelly- How McCoy got a Freaky Self Aware Ship for a Stalker, Pretty Much Ended His Universe and Learnt To Love The Stinkin' Bomb. This is not a happy story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atticus

**Author's Note:**

> Optionally, we can call this story 'the really sad one where no one is happy and a better summary is needed.'

\--

‘Remember what I lost like hot coals in my hand from days gone by  
Like Pandora adored the euphoria as her heart raced  
Like love lost you've got to try even in vain  
Feels like you'll go insane  
But you're the hardest instrument that I've ever had to play’

\--

The thing with the spaceship isn’t as weird as the thing with the omnipotent aliens and their grand designs in the shape of homosexually friendly rings. Or the other thing where everyone he knows is secretly psychotic in varyingly terrifying ways. Or the other, other thing where he’s sure that Jo and Jim send each other letters full of their concern for his mental stability following that other, other, other thing with Spock and the marshmallows.

Frankly, the thing with the spaceship just isn’t that weird.

Jim got the statue on Vera II that looks like he has a dick for a nose, Scotty has his weird tribute harem from ‘planet of the women who slightly resemble vegetables’ that mostly follows him around and coo when he says anything remotely Scottish and no one’s ever really managed to figure out why that one ensign down in Stellar Cartography was ‘gifted’ with always having a bunch of sparkles around him. So in the weirdness that is working on the SS ‘WTF? NO SRSLY ENTERPRISE, WTF?’ a self aware spaceship that likes sending you pictures of Uhura in the shower is not that weird.  
And McCoy then makes the mistake of looking out the window to his left.

And oh sweet merciful god, it is wearing lipstick.

Suddenly that one bottle of vodka he’s been saving seems like a brilliant idea.

\--

That other, other, other, other thing in which Chekov enjoys being a drag queen?

That one’s weird.

\--

So after escaping into the bowels of the ship where there are no goddamn windows, McCoy slips behind a nacelle, twists the top and swigs some of the vodka.

“Can I have some?”

Chekov

“Uh, you’re a little young or something aren’t you?”

Chekov looks at him from beneath his wild, curly, under-fucking-age hair and says very gravely, “If I am old enough to put on a sequined dress and grind on a table while singing Uptown Girl I am old enough for vodka.”

McCoy, deathly afraid to argue with the person who decides whether or not they fly into a sun, just hands him the vodka and wishes for a swift exit from whatever the fuck he is doing on this ship. That and oh god,his injuries last month suddenly make so much more sense. Chekov sits down and hands him back his bottle of vodka considerably less full then when he handed it over.

“So Doc I thi-”

“I don’t care if you’ve done a Liza Minnelli impression for the head of Starfleet Medical, don’t call me that.”

“Leonard.”

Fine kid, you win, “I prefer Doc.”

“Shame then that you had to go and ruin it.” he says non-chalant, dusting off an immaculate sleeve. “Now, it has to come to the attention of myself and others of the crew that you seem to be ignorant of a few  
things-”

Oh, he knows this one, “Spock and Jim are fucking and I’m meant to be upset.”

Chekov blinks, “You know?”

“I asked to watch.”

“Oooooooh...well, I don’t suppose you’d mind if we ruined them on your behalf anyway? It’s just, Nyota already had to sleep with someone to install the cameras and Sulu hasn’t brutally murdered anyone in like, three  
days and he’s getting a little too close to going all ‘pillage and mark my territory’ again which was hot but not that hot, not to mention Gaila’s been planning to drug you for ages now and she’d really be put out if you didn’t at least let her fondle you a little.”

Chekov waves his hands about as he talks and makes a few weirdly suggestive gestures towards his hips. Then he mentally punches himself in the face because the kid is like, 12 and McCoy is not old enough to be that sort of dirty minded. Only on this ship would a conversation with the words ‘camera’, ‘brutally murder’ and ‘planning to drug you’ be used in the same paragraph without any thought to the law. Any law. In any galaxy. Ever.

“Sure kid, why not. I’ll be sure to set up some sort of easy to reach hypo so Gaila can just knock me out in my room. Wouldn’t want her fucking up and killing me.” While inside he’s going, ‘Oh my fucking god, when did reality break on me? Is- Is this the first circle of hell?’

Chekov smiles so big he looks about 8 years old.

“Great so we’ll set it up for tonight?”

“If I say yes will you leave me alone with the vodka?” he gestures to the lonely warming bottle of vodka and then to himself, the lonely vodka-less doctor. Frankly, both he and the vodka could be solving their problems right now.

His smile gets bigger, “Of course doctor! I shall see you tomorrow, or perhaps not, Gaila may decide to keep you.”

McCoy rolls his eyes and gestures away, “Shoo, this is old alcoholic time and you’re 30 years too young.”

“Why Doc, you’re not that old. I’d still have sex with you. If I was blindfolded. On roofies.”

“Leave.”

\--

Two days later he wakes up stinking of pheromones. Later he’ll find out that Spock and Jim have decided to be intergalactic porn stars and eight people have been killed in a riot over the last chocolate bar. Seven of them by Sulu, one by Chapel of all fucking people.

Oh, and a message from Pike.

‘So...you know the Enterprise has lost 70 people in the last thirteen months? And I don’t mean dead, I mean gone native, been mistaken for gods, married off to priestesses, given away in brothels and ascended into a higher plane of existence. Not all of them where red shirts you know. Just, look, think of a cover up. For some reason the rest of the universe still likes you guys. Invent a disease that targets stupid people. Really invent a disease that kills stupid people. Create a coup, take over and throw Jim’s ass in the brig. Something, anything! He has a porno now! Called ‘Jim Does Vulcan.’ What the hell? When I said the fleet needed new blood I did not mean ‘find the most unstable people you can, throw them on a ship and see what happens.’ I need a drink. Sandra! Find me the most alcoholic thing you can! I’ll send you some. Don’t worry. Jesus wept, why the fuck did I recruit that kid? What the fuck was I thinking? That kid is fucking nuts. What the fuck was I thinking?’

For the third time in as many months McCoy wonders how he somehow ended up counselling Admiral Pike through his Kirk induced meltdown. But, then, it’s not like anyone else has put up with the kid long enough to help.

\--

The thing where everyone accuses him of having designs on Chekov is just really creepy.

\--

“So Chekov, what’s the gayest thing about you?” Jim asks while draped like a limpet over his chair. For his part, McCoy is here to make sure that a) his newly acquired love sick admirer (that is, the ship) doesn’t do something stupid like fly in front of the Enterprise mid-warp and b) to stop Jim from doing anything more complicated than breathing because so help him if he visits the sickbay again this month, McCoy will just put everyone out of their misery.

“My sexual preference for men, captain. And I’m not gay. I am unisexual. I like everything.”

Sulu leans over to a lieutenant and whispers “In the ass.” The lieutenant nods and rolls his eyes as Sulu giggles. McCoy likes that guy, whoever he is. Seems to have more than a passing idea of common sense.

“Well, yes, that can be nice too but there are other-” Chekov turns towards the captain and starts gesturing, the rest of the sentence incomprehensible gibberish about Andorian military positions.

“Ensign, perhaps you could return attention to the navigation panels. It does not strike me as a good idea to have the person responsible for making sure we do not die a very uncomfortable death via crashing into a star distracted.” Spock says as he strides onto the bridge, head tilted to his PADD.

“How’d you know?” Jim asks, bending over inappropriately to get a better look at Spock.

Spock quirks an eyebrow, “The intercom sir. It’s been on for three minutes already.”

Jim pouts a little as Spock turns to his station. McCoy takes it as prime time to leave. Awkwardness growing with every moment. He takes a step toward the turbolift.

“Bones! Where are you going!” Jim. Of course. That bastards always stopping him from going places without him. Why did he bring him onboard anyway? His ass isn’t that great. McCoy takes another look at the appendage in question.

Okay, it is.

“Sickbay, you know, where I work?”

Jim blinks really slowly, “Sickbay? But I want you on the bridge.”

He sighs and resigns himself to explaining yet again that Jim cannot actually always have his cake and eat it too, “Jim, what did we say about inappropriate behaviour? Like being childish, asshole-ish or wantonly sexually with multi-limbed, all powerful goddesses?”

“Don’t, unless it’ll save someone’s ass.”

“And is anyone in immediate danger right this very second?”

Spock opens his mouth to say something no doubt irritating and unhelpful but someone, probably Nyota from the frantic hand waving and the flapping of her mouth, stops him.

“Well. Not here, but-”

Okay. Fine. There’s being considerate of a less then clean break up and then there’s being a doormat. “Jim. Turbolift. Right now.”

Jim looks all startled for a moment, obviously he never expected to be called out in public like this, “Um, I’m like, captaining and stuff right now.”

“Turbolift. Now.”

Jim jumps up and heads in half a step ahead of McCoy. There is silence, there is a beep, then there is McCoy leaning across and hitting the pause all button. He turns so that Jim is pressed against the wall and they’re looking eye to eye.

“See, Jim, here’s the thing. We. Are not. In a relationship.” He punctuates every word with a jab to his chest.

Jim pouts, “I like to think we’re friends, despite the fact that you took out a restraining order on me on 7 different planets just because I watched you shower that one time, the book said it would be romantic!”

“A) it wasn’t once it was 18 times. B) That’s 9 planets you asshole. C) Of course we’re fucking friends. The only people I’d have arrested on my behalf are friends and my ex-wife.” He sucks in a breath, “And we are friends Jim, but you broke up with me and it’s still hard to be around you and Spock. You know, the ex’s thing?”

Jim blinks, “No, not really. Everyone loves me.”

The worst bit is that all of Jim’s ex’s still do genuinely like him as a person.

“It’s difficult Jim. Give me time.”

Jim tilts his head and blinks very slow. McCoy sighs when Jim’s eyes lose the glassy sheen and go sharp. Now Jims going to be weird and cuddly instead of weird and just an asshole.

“Okay, sure, I can do that.”

Yeah, sure he can.

\--

On Tuesday Jim is back to sitting in his lap and clenching at inopportune times.

Oh look, he can’t.

\--

The thing where Jim is taken hostage to be used by some deity in whatever way they see fit?

That’s a Thursday.

\--

“Nature, disease, darkness, rapists...you sure can pick ‘em Spock.”

Spock raises an eyebrow, “Kindly shut the fuck up, Doctor.”

Yeesh, touchy today.

“Someones cranky. Can’t see why, being held upside down by malevolent aliens is my favourite holiday activity. Right next to being stabbed with illicit substances.”

“Lt Gaila maintains she had permission.”

“That so,” McCoy muses, “I don’t think I was in any fit state to give it.”

Spock somehow manages to convey a dirty message about McCoy’s mother and a dog with his eyebrows. Before he can make a scathing reply the door opens and a man dressed like an elf at mardi gras walks in. He stands for a moment and starts shaking a large pink stick around before wobbling his head.

“Release them!”

Yeah, let’s do that.

They’re frog marched to a podium and forced to kneel. For his part McCoy cusses out a few million people in a couple of language. Spock corrects him under his breath. McCoy chooses to think this is them getting along instead of them about to brutally sacrificed to an alien god. Frankly, they’re probably the same thing.

There’s lots more stick shaking and head shaking.

Then, of course, there’s Jim in a pair of absolutely fabulous nipple rings and what might be a scarf covering his dick lying across a pile of half naked men holding a sceptre.

Single handily making the universe a gayer place to be.

“Look what I found guys! Aren’t they cute!”

Cute is not what a bunch of short men with faces like walruses are usually described as.

“Sure Jim. Can you maybe let us go?”

Jim frowns, “Uh, I don’t think that’ll go so well.”

He points to one guy gyrating like he has no spine and then to the big ol’ laser canon mounted behind him.

“See that guy, that guy doesn’t exactly want me to go anywhere.”

Spock frowns in that entirely elegant way that communicates the vast amount by which they suck. He rolls his shoulders and cracks a few vertebrae.

McCoy rolls his eyes, “I see we’ll be doing this the fun way this week.”

Spock pulls his arms forward and people go flying. It’s a damn good thing it’s not McCoys job to care about this part of the fight because he’d be useless at it. As far as he can tell Spock just broke the speed  
barrier into a bazillion pieces and broke about that many bones.

So there’s some hitting, and cussing, and hating and then there’s a lot of Spock being naked which is, huh, interesting, then there’s a lot of ‘run, fuck it, run!’

There’s a split second where McCoys mind slips off ‘RUN!’ and on to, ‘Gee Spock has nicely toned buttocks’ which he equates to his flight or fight instinct, readjusts his pants and desperately continues to run.

They get back to the ship with virtue intact and minds blown. Well, just McCoy.

\--

The thing where he suddenly gets Jims attraction to Spock?

That’s just trouble

\--

So

Spock

Yep, he’s a little bit fucked.

It’s been two months and sixteen long days since that clusterfuck on planet ‘Booty Shake’ and McCoy is going out of his mind. Spocks everywhere. All the time. It could drive a man to drink and drink he has, down in the recesses of the ship with nothing but the engineering staff and Russian jailbait to keep him company. Jesus wept, then there’s the thought of the two of the them together which is enough to get a holy man off let alone someone like McCoy who’s actually seen them naked and going at it.

Today however is a new height in blue balling. Today he is giving Spock a ‘therapeutic massage.’

He has his hands on Spocks back, slowly massaging hot oil into the over tense muscles. He has no fucking clue why he’s doing this, well, yes, he has training as a masseuse and Spock had said he trusted him but...this isn’t...it’s not professional dammit!

Oh god, he’s really pretty like this

Oh god, he actually thought that!

When his thoughts slip towards ‘Hmmm, green’ a few too many times McCoy gives up gracefully and says, “So I think we’re done here.”

Spock lazily opens an eyelid, “We have not started Doctor.”

McCoy swallows and busies his hands with a towel, “I’ve applied the oil and rubbed it and, uh, don’t you have something to do with Jim this evening?”

“No,” Spock says, sitting up and covering his waist with a towel, “I do not. In fact my only purpose tonight is to be here.”

No dick, baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad dick.

“Well, I guess we could get dinner or something.” He does not flush and duck his head.

Spock does this filthy little smirk of superiority, “Yes. Dinner.”

\--

“So. Did we really just-”

“Insert tab A, slot B. As Jim puts it.”

“Yeah, he does say that doesn’t he?”

\--

Tick Tock

He has breakfast with Nyota. She's currently waging a one woman war against the uniform code, type casting in women’s roles on a battleship and Sulu’s advances for a threesome. She's winning two of those battles.

“But what I don’t understand is if Chekov’s such a slut why is he asking me for it. The kids pretty bendy.” Nyota says, tapping her fork on her half empty tray.

“I do not want to know how you know that.” McCoy says over a mouthful of not-really-bacon, “And I don’t want to hear about it either.”

She leans back in her chair, “Fine, cranky pants. Let’s talk about your sex life. Bone anyone’s significant bondmate recently.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” And then he viciously stabs his not-salad. Fucking salad, being so green and smart and fantastic in bed. Oh god, he’s blaming the greenery. “It was only once.”

Nyota gives him this long look that reminds him exactly how they got to having breakfast every second morning. Reminders of notebooks and long nights holding her while she cried. They both remember watching her heart break.

“It only ever has to be once.”

\--

The ship, it hasn’t forgotten the man with the sad eyes and the rough voice who thinks GeorgiaJoannaGeorgia in the middle of the sleep-time and who tastes of bitter things slid on his skin.

It remembers him and hopes that if it can push this otherShip with no voice but a heart that beats with its occupants toward the place it was born from He can give the sad man a new chance.

\--

“-And that is why I have to stop sleeping with you, either of you. Questions?”

Jim sticks his hand up and waves it like a five year old, he has glasses on and is staring at the darkened screen with intense focus, “Was I meant to be taking notes on the Venn Diagram of Professional Standards?”  


Spock leans over, takes Jims PADD and slowly erases everything on it, “I’m not sure how you passed the academy, Captain. Human phalluses are not useful studying material.”

“Easy, blew up a Romulan ship from another universe.”

McCoy rubs his eyes and hopes someone smites him down, “Any questions that won’t drive me to suicide?”

“Your ass looks great in those pants.”

“Not a question Jim.”

“But it is a fact.”

“Still not a question Spock.”

He flops into a chair and regards them with something like steel in his backbone. Fifteen slides of a presentation later and they still don’t get it.

McCoy leans forward and motions with his hands for both of the other men to come closer, “Okay, here’s the gist of it. Cheatings bad, we don’t do it.”

Both of them frown and look at each other then frown some more.

“But we both want to have sex with you,” Jim says slowly and clearly like McCoy is the one who’s getting the sexual harassment lecture, “So we aren’t cheating.”

Oh sweet merciful Lord in heaven.

“Jesus Christ, you’re serious aren’t you? Neither of you get it?” It’s like slamming his head against a brick wall. He appeals to Spocks innate sense of decency, “Don’t they have some ‘thou shalt not cheat’ thing on Vulcan?”

“Impractical. Too few of us left to be that particular. Much better to be logical about the distribution of genetic material. Besides, I enjoy ‘sleeping’ with you.” Spock says, logical as all-fucking-ways even when what he’s basically saying is that his entire species should whore around indiscriminately because it’s good for genetics.

McCoy nods a little and puts his face in his hands, “Oh god. Listen. Spock. I’m a man. I’m not useful for reproduction that way.”

Jim brightens, “There are machines-”

McCoy holds up a hand, “Shut the fuck up Jim, I am not getting pregnant.”

Spock tilts his head, and oh no, no, they are not doing this, “I would like his first child.”

“Yeah okay, well, if we raise it together...” Jim replies, twisting his hands in the air.

The bitter sting of a lost child hits the back of McCoy’s throat. Joanna is so fucking far away its hard to conceive it and here they are talking about another child like they have any sort of fucking right to even think of it around him. About him.

“Both of you shut the fuck up or I swear to god I will never forgive you.”

The words spit out of him and he can see the shock on their faces, Jim remembers first and then Spock. They both reach out at the same time and he steps back. His eyes close and he’s a quarter of a moment away from tears.

“Shut up, please, just, stop it. Stop it. You can’t do this to me, you can’t just keep using this against me. This is me saying no means no. Leave me out of this. I want no part of it or you.” his voice raises in pitch and intensity until it’s the only audible thing in the room.

Again, neither have any recognition of anything he’s said. For a moment McCoy’s so very angry at Vulcan for teaching Spock to forget his feelings and Iowa for breaking Jim of fidelity and loyalty to things that don’t fly at warp 8. He hates it so much he can understand why Nyota won’t look Jim in the eyes, why she shakes when Spock asks for something. He owes her so much more than a cup of coffee for not snapping because right now, right this second he can see why someone could kill over this.

Not even Jocelyn put this sort of anger in him.

“Don’t talk to me. Either of you. Until you both grow the fuck up. There’s no excuse for using people like this.”

\--

The thing where he’s a bitter old man is right next to the other thing where his ex-wife is a bitch whore.

The thing between them is eight years old with a mouth full of loose teeth and the prettiest damn eyes he’s ever seen.

\--

Spock and Jim don’t really get it. Like. Ever.

See, he knows this because if they got it they wouldn’t insist on a bouquet of flowers being delivered to Uhura every so often for being such a great friend, they’d notice that Chekov ceased being really underage may haps a few years back now. Perhaps they’d notice something that isn’t shooting at them or having sex with them. They’d offered, right at the beginning, McCoy on the bed between them. ‘Best in threes,’ they’d said and he’d had to disagree.

Joce taught him that. A third side doesn’t make a relationship any less volatile. So he tells them. ‘Jim,’ he says, ‘Jim this ain’t how this works. You’ve hurt a whole of people with this.’ And they smile and agree and say ‘so will you?’

He won’t.

They frown and say- ‘Why not?’

‘Because I watched you two draw together, rip everything between you apart. You know what was between you two? What you ripped up, chewed up, spat out?’  
They don’t.

‘Me and Nyota, Jim. You remember the bit where you said you loved me, Jim? And Spock, you offered her your mothers ring and suddenly none of that means a goddamn thing.’ He pauses, breathes a sigh in, ‘you broke us open kid. It takes time to heal that and I can’t spend it wrapped up here. That ain’t a fix just another patch I’ll have to get off too.’  
Spock and Jim still don’t get it. For a moment McCoy’s sad they won’t ever understand a moment of heartache. Won’t know what it is to have your heart reach up and throw itself out. Won’t understand that their perfect amazing bond ripped through other ones that were just as important. They won’t get it.

They won’t ever get it.

\--

But oh, if he knew what came next –if McCoy could see the future –if a million other buts of quantum mechanics and temporal physics ceased to be –if he could see what happens next.  
He would really do anything to take it back. Forgive them anything.

\--

It goes like this-

There is a crash

There is some screaming

There is a lot of noise and courage and raging, raging against the dying of the light.

Then there is nothing.

Nothing, no noise, no grandeur just a ship falling into a star and the last image, the last note in a great universal sonata of Spock and Jim, disappearing into the light

\--

It’s a bitter sort of agony, watching people you love die.

Nyota’s hand is on his cheek in a cruel imitation of the comfort she used to offer Spock. His face is so cold and numb he can’t feel it. His lungs are heavy too. Like someone dropped a weight in them. Filled them with water. Covered them in ice. He feels like he could keel over from too much pain and misery and not enough nights spent watching and touching and yelling and teasing. He feels like he hasn’t done enough. Like he never will.

Nyota opens her mouth to speak and all he hears is a heartbreak tiny noise. She's not crying and he’s holding her hand against his face and mumbling in tune to the deep, aching sounds coming from the back of her throat. He says ‘no, it’s not, it can’t, no, no, no’ while Nyota makes the most distressing sounds he’s ever heard.

“Tell me it’s not. Tell me it isn’t.” She says and he falls to his knees in front of her. ‘It is,’ he says when he can breathe again, ‘it is, I’m so fucking sorry darling, it is’.

His voice is gone. He breaks apart on the floor and she falls down with him. Her agony turns into fury and his turns into weariness. They fight and they cry and they lay together hands on each other’s hearts.

“Do we keep going?”

He looks into her eyes, why is she asking him, why the fuck would he know anything?

And then- oh

\--

It goes like this-

In the Andromeda system there is a planet the Andorian’s often use for diplomatic meetings. The Enterprise turns up because the people apparently need to know they still care. The Federation has fallen on tough times. The political fallout from Vulcan is finally catching up and people are asking ‘why’ instead of ‘how’. Alternate realities are harder to explain to the general public than first thought.  
McCoy, for his part, is standing still and pulling at his itchy collar. Not meant to breathe, these uniforms. Especially if you live on a diet of actual food, unlike Jim and his unsanitary, unhealthy habit of sticking everything in his mouth without regard to safety or, you know, decorum. The ambassador walks in, smiles at Spock and wiggles her antennae at Jim. McCoy rolls his eyes and goes looking for something worth getting drunk on. It’s a diplomatic affair. He finds nothing.

After a very boring sit down dinner, McCoy and Chekov wander off as they’re wont to do nowadays, having somehow racked up a rapport in between drinking binges. They argue about some Russian philosophy and then about some good ol’ southern philosophy. Chekov says not all problems can be solved with excessive violence. McCoy says he’s far too old to use shameless sexual manipulation on everyone he meets.  
Chekov, the fucker, smiles and says- “At least I wish to use it before losing it.”

Before McCoy can work up any proper steam about a comeback (‘Did you just call me a prude? Kid, you don’t even know, one time there was this Trill lady who could-’) a large gong rings out. A woman, tall, unbelievable tits, walks forward and stands in front of a podium that rises from the floor. She looks around the room and smiles specifically at McCoy.

“It is time for the yearly renewal. Visitors, come forward and place your hands upon the mighty stone of power.” She announces and holds out her arms. Behind her a huge green, pulsing stone rises from the ground. Everyone looks at the stone. Its huge, its green, it may or may not be throwing off radiation like a motherfucker. Chekov nudges him on the shoulder and indicates with his eyebrows that, no homo, there is no radiation here, how could he think that? That’s stupid. He nods back and thanks god for still having the appropriate amount of limbs.

Spock and Jim do some eyebrow talk of their own and quickly come to the decision to walk head held high into danger.

Jim goes first, “What do we need to do?”

The women smiles warm and wide. “So it will be you. The universe screams already.”

That’s probably not good.

“Oh...kay.” Jim says, “So, what do we do?”

“You will walk into the stone. The stone will show you your story.” She claps her hands and the stone flashes and dims.

Yeah, a little bit not good.

From the other side of the room he spots Nyota and Sulu weaving in and out of the crowd with appropriately terrifying red shirts behind them. Like fuck they’re gonna let Jim do this alone. Sulu inclines his head just so and every Starfleet asset in the building is on guard for the massive FUBAR they know is coming.

Jim inclines his head, listening to something no one else can hear. On the otherside of the room Nyota flinches and looks at Spock, “Stand down guys.” Jim says.

A red shirt splutters, “But-”

“They’re friends guys, remember those?” Meaning that they’re allies we can’t afford to piss off. Bad for politics. They all move from obvious aggression to something more passive.

“We’ll be on standby.” Nyota says with determination.

“Uhu-”

“Standby Kirk. It’s the best you’ll get.”

Nyota and Jim look at each other for a long time. Eventually he nods, “Yeah okay.”

Jim looks at Spock and inclines his head in a ‘come on then’ motion. Seemingly remembering that he can’t just make that decision on his own, he also nods at the blonde woman.

“You may take him. One half rarely strays without the other.”

McCoy catches the delighted look on Jims face and the nauseated one on Nyota’s. He asks himself how he feels about this thing between them all being out in the open. He ends up with something between ‘oh my god’ and ‘fuck it, everyone knew already’. Both of them walk towards the stones, put their hands on the stone, let the stone soak them up while everyone else waits.

\--

Later Jim walks out ashen faced and frowning. They’re all scared, its twelve hours, 42 since they walked in. Spock comes out actually shaking with the effort to walk. That, the shaking and the frowning, that should have been the first clue. But if there’s anything McCoy can ignore, its signs. That Jocelyn was cheating, that Jim was cheating too, that maybe Nyota has a point and he shouldn’t have let Spock and Jim take them to their quarters the same night and take him apart.

But hey, he’s not that bright.

\--

The thing where Spock and Jim steal a shuttlecraft and abandon everyone?

That’s a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

\--

Four days, eight hours since the glowing stone and McCoy is going out of his mind.

They stole a motherfucking ship. They stole it and just fucking- didn’t tell fucking anybody- just decided-

Fuck them. Fuck them hard and unlubricated. Fuck them like the motherfucking pieces of shit they are for leaving him in charge of this ship. Fuck them.  
Protocol states that the three people at the top of the chain of command can’t work in the same department. Should not be in the same location if it can be helped, have leadership experience and holy hell, it should not be him in this chair. It should not. But Scotty was knocked out in an explosion when the shuttle took off. Sulu is currently fighting off something in the lower decks. Uhura is trying to piece together a broken message from those traitorous fuckers. They better have an abso-fucking-lutely great excuse when he gets to them or swear to god he’s gonna kill them. Chekov is single handily making sure they don’t die, the thingy in the whatsit that auto-detects anomalies at warp is broken and fuck it all, Cupcake is busy helping Sulu.

It’s just him. Just him and they are fucked.

“What’s our status?” He yells because it seems the thing to do.

“Fucked and rapidly approaching being in a fire, sir!” some ensign yells. A console explodes and the ship takes another jumpy leap into warp. He knows that Chekov is doing his best. The kid is doing the work of about twenty people right now and he should cut him some slack but they’ve lost the goddamn captain and he needs to be wherever Nyota’s shouting about approximately yesterday.

“Fix it. We have got exactly no time to die out here.” He gets up and heads toward the lift, “If you need me I’ll be in the medbay.” He steps into the lift and breathes for a piece of chaos he understands.

The ride to medbay is silent. He figures it’s probably the only piece of quiet he’s going to get for awhile. He leans his head against a wall and breathes. In. Out. It’s okay. Jim and Spock will come back. In. Out.

‘It doesn’t have to be this way.’

“What the fuck?” he says against the soft whisper in his mind. It sounds like a wind chime, all gossamer notes and scales. It’s probably the last sort of thing he wants to hear right now.

‘Choose me.’

“I am getting the fuck off this ride.” He opens the doors on the next level.

‘No!’

The doors slam shut again.

‘Do as I say and all will be well Sad-Eyes.’

“Get out of my head!” he pushes back against whatever tries to crawl inside his head. The voice slams into him, huge pressure that makes his nose bleed.

‘You will do it. I want this to be your choice.’

“Get out!” he screams again and pushes as hard as he can.

The voice is silent.

\--

The sad one was not meant to reject her like this, the ship thinks as it trails behind the otherShip. If the sad one will not listen to reason then she will simply have to make him. The ship pushes the otherShip. Makes it follow her when Sad-Eyes refused to steer it. The otherShip objects, pushes half constructed pictures of the people it is missing and it’s need to find them. The otherShip is young yet. It will learn to let go of its people. They do not stay long.

The otherShip bows under the force and changes to follow.

\--

“I can’t make her turn Captain!” Chekov screams just before he’s blown back from his console.

“Pavel!” Sulu exclaims trying to alter the direction from the helm.

“What the hell?” someone screams, “What the actual hell is going on?”

That’s the last thing anyone says as they’re all enveloped in light.

\--

The next biggest problem, after everyone figures out that they can’t control the ship (and holy hell what is that about?) Is that the Aurora, newly commissioned warship built for kicking ass and spitting on graves, is currently staring them down with an irate captain screaming at them to stand the fuck down. Impossible, McCoy would like to say, we don’t have control over the ship. Transmissions out have been stopped. They can’t say a damn thing. They figured out how to make the ship stop. Shut down the engines and the turbines, Scotty knows what he did. Dead in the water anyway. Life support, food, water, replicators, no moving forward or backward. The shields are still up and functioning. He doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. There are maybe 57 of them left alive at this point. Explosions, rips in the hull, breaching of protocols and electrical fires have killed the rest.

So they watch huddled together on the bridge. They watch as Starfleet yells demands. As the ship charges up the weapons. As the weapons fire. As the captain demands an admiral come talk to them. They wait for nearly three days, until the view screen flickers and Pikes frown appears.

Pike scrunches his eyes and a hand drifts over the bridge of his nose. “Hola. Look, if you could communicate Jim I’m sure you would have already so at this point we are assuming the ship has been taken by hostile entities. If the crew is still alive we would be open to negotiations.” He inhales abruptly, air whistling in the silence of the bridge, “If they are dead know that we are taking this as a hostile act and once we know who you are we will take it as a declaration of war. We will board. We will kill. You have 10 minutes to give some sort of response. Pike out.”

The bridge is silent.

Then-

“He didn’t even see us-”

“What does he mean response-”

“Captain what do we-”

“Charging weapons, we’re firing-!”

“No, I clamped the dampeners we can’t fire-!”

“Captain-”

“Captain-”

“They’re gonna kill us-”

“Shut up!” Nyota yells, thank god because McCoy really has no idea what to do. “We’ve got exactly 9 minutes to come up with a plan. So get to-”

“We don’t.” A small blonde lieutenant working the science station says, voice grave and accepting, “The ship just fired.”

A terrible silence spills on them as they sit and watch the torpedo hit and blast through the shields of the Aurora. Everyone looks from one face to another. What do they do? What can they do? They’re locked out of the systems, the federation thinks they’re vigilantes and their real captain is gone, gone, gone. The blonde lieutenant from before, Prachel? Is that her name? Calmly walks over to the helm and places a hand on the lever. Pull that and it’ll break the shut down on the engines.

Nyota says it first, “What, exactly, do we have left to lose?”

Prachel pulls the lever.

\--

They are the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At least, that’s what they think as they leap in jerky stops from planet to planet going wherever the ship takes them. McCoy would do a lot for even a taste of a clue to what he’s meant to be doing. Currently, Sulu is in command (Thank god, McCoy is just not suited to it) and there is a small group gathering supplies like water on a habitual, non-threatening planet. McCoy is in medbay looking at the bodies of the people they could salvage. There’ll be a mass burning on the planet tonight, not like the goddamn Prime Directive applies anymore.

The bodies smell and instead of having his panic attack on the medbay floor he makes it to his room. He collapses on the bed and listens to his heart try to leave his chest.

‘Let me help.’

“Give them back, give me my life back you stupid piece of junk.”

And oh god, they’ll tell Jo he’s dead. Tell his daughter he died. Oh god, he’ll never see her again. Not ever.

‘The other two have completed their journey. You may see your daughter again.’

“Just take me to them. Please.”

His heart speeds up to just past brutal. The voice hums in his mind for a moment.

‘Very well.’

\--

It goes like this-

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Not ‘hi’, not ‘sorry’, it’s ‘you shouldn’t be here.’ Best welcome he’s ever gotten. Really.

McCoy stares straight at the grainy image of Jim on the screen. Jim’s on a wasted power station circling an exploding star. He and Spock are trying to stop it from exploding and taking out half the universe. Their best solution is an injection of something tiny and red into the centre of it. “Why would that be darlin’? Where else should I be?” McCoy says nastily.

Jim scrunches his eyes, he can’t have been eating well, his cheekbones are too prominent, “Go home Bones. Please.”

And isn’t that a problem? He can’t go home. There isn’t anywhere to go. If home is where your heart is then home is a failing space station orbiting a soon to be supernova. Home is a mansion in Georgia and a little girls smile. Home is something that’s lying broken at his feet.

“There isn’t a home to go back to.”

“Don’t do this to yourself. Please.” Jim whispers.

The ship shudders under his fingers, gravity wells and polar convulsions, “What? Watch you be stupid and selfish? Too late to stop watching darlin’.”

He watches Jim’s heart break. McCoy will not leave and Jim will have to live with knowing that his best friend watched him die. McCoy can’t even care anymore.

“Don’t make me know you saw this.”

“There’s another way, there’s always another way.” McCoy starts begging, if this doesn’t get him to stop and come back- “I love you.”

Jim looks at him, face ashen and eyes shuttered. His eyes close. He’s accepted it even if McCoy hasn’t.

“Yeah, I know that.”

And the station goes crashing into the star.

\--

And _oh_ is what he’ll think lying in a cooling bed with Nyota wrapped around him. _They’re gone. I’m the one left standing. Oh. It goes like this._

\--

The ship takes four weeks to speak to him again.

‘I want to go home.’

“That’s fine darlin’. Drop us off at the nearest Federation base when you’re ready.”

‘You can’t leave.’

He sighs against his pillow, “I know.”

‘Will you come with me?’

McCoy rolls onto his back and stares out the window at the stars. His hands fold over his stomach. “I don’t have a choice.”

\--

The ship takes them to a desolate asteroid belt circled by wrecks of ships and large pieces of coloured stone. The Enterprise is taking a battering –which is an understatement really; it’s currently being held together by well wishes and duct tape. Scotty is not happy. McCoy is sitting on the floor in front of the captain’s chair. Sulu making micro adjustments to the course and some guy he doesn’t know yet using some impressive Orion swearing at his console make up his left and right sides respectively. Everyone else is trying to stop the ship from buckling with field generators strapped to the inner hull. With the amount of times his new shiny toy of a ship has been twice damned to hell, he can imagine it’s pretty difficult job for the crew.

The ship does another one of its jerky things and Sulu yells, ‘Brace!’ into the intercom.

The Enterprise jerks forward a few times and slips into a very bumpy full impulse. They turn unsteadily and swerve into orbit over a green moon.

‘Home.’ That insidious, musical voice whispers.

“Not our home.”

He gets the feeling of a frown. He ignores that.

Scotty comes up onside him. He’s lost a lot of weight and gained a lot of beard. “Well Doc, do you wanna go down? It’s all breathable right Prachel?”

Prachel gives a disdainful murmur and nods, “We have breathable air, drinkable water and about a half million probably bigoted and derisive natives. I suggest taking Geoff and his muscle entourage.”

“I swear Prachel, you get meaner every time I talk to you.” Scotty grins and slaps McCoy’s shoulder.

McCoy sighs, “Guess I’m going then.”

“I should think so sir.” Prachel nods at them both and goes to stand by the lift. Prachel appointed herself his personal assistant awhile ago. He knows she’s waiting for him. It’s a little intimidating.  
McCoy pinches the bridge of his nose and looks at Scotty, “You’re in charge I guess.”

“Yep.”

“And you’re going to use this time to do something that will horrify me aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

McCoy gives him a serious onceover, “Vigilantism really suits you, you know.”

Scotty nods solemnly, “Contraband and illegal fixings are where my heart has always lain.”

When he finally walks onto the lift he looks at Prachel and asks, “Was he serious about the contraband?”

“Sir,” she says, not exactly unkind but leaning towards that whole polite ‘are you idiotic?’ tone she’s so good at, “Think about where we are in the universe. Then you should, rightly, assume that you do not want to know.”

And well, it ain’t like she's wrong.

\--

“I hate this planet. Like, really. Hate.”

“We all hate this planet Mikey.”

“Your hair is not about to catch fire!”

“Because I’m bald!”

He went down with five in the away team, not including him. One was killed by enemy fire. He may murder two more of them for being too goddamn loud. Which leaves him with Chekov and Nyota. Not bad fighting odds. He tries to move his arms and huffs when that fails. These guys are good at tying people to sacrificial alters. Sacrificial alters over fire no less.

“What the hell do you want from us?” he yells at the appallingly dressed man sitting on a throne that practically threw up pillows. He’s ivory skinned, green haired and wearing what looks like 45 different patterns on one side alone. And a pair of pants with a crotch opening. McCoy kinda thought the whole point of pants was for that not to happen. The man grins. McCoy feels his bones start to rattle and quake.

‘Father!’

Oh, yay, just when you think things can’t get more fucked up, the alien ship that ruined your life takes you home to meet the parents.  
“You made that thing?”

The ivory skinned man smiles, “One of my favourites.”

‘Help the sad one, father.’

“In a moment sweetpea,” The ivory man says and with a click of his fingers, McCoy and Co. from being tied to an altar to sitting upright. “Isn’t that better Doctor?”

“Sure,” McCoy hits his comm badge, “Enterprise, beam us up.”

“The Enterprise is gone doctor; I’ve transferred all, uh, personnel to my daughter.”

“What do you want with us?” he growls out. His wrists hurt like all fuck. The rest of his team look okay. Battered but more pissed about it than anything.

Mr Ivory settles back down in his gross over pillowed throne and waves a hand. Out come drinks and food. After a moment he settles an arm thoughtfully on his knee and his chin on to that, “Did you know doctor that in 2 out of 3 universes you die before you’re 50? In 1 out of 8 you never see Joanna again after that first mission? That in 4 out of 9 you sacrifice your life to have it mean virtually nothing. Doctor, the universes you matter in are greatly outnumbered by the ones where you’re barely a footnote in someone else’s story. I think that’s mighty unfair.”

McCoy mulls that over while the rest of his team looks for an exit. “Don’t explain why we’re here.”

“I, doctor, am going to offer you a choice.” He pauses and claps his hands, everything disappears, “You can have your lovers back or you can have your own story. Full of greatness and love and all those other things you decided to stop chasing years ago. If you choose the first option it will not last, you will pay for it, so will everyone around you. It will not be what you think you want. You will pay nothing for the second.”

And McCoy is not very selfish, he’s really not, he asks for good bourbon and his daughter and friends who do not die when they don’t have to. Leonard, however, is a selfish bastard who wants everything and can’t quite get why he can’t have it. This time McCoy lets Leonard choose. Lets Leonard have what he wants.

“I want Jim and Spock back.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure.”

“This is a bad choice.”

“Yeah, but it’s my choice.”

The big god thing clicks its fingers. “I hope you’re happy.”

\--

First thing Jim says is- “You got anything to eat?”

He’s sparkly and lying on his bed. He’s see through. Transparent. Human motherfucking cellophane.

“How is this even happening?” McCoy says as he leans his face into his bed. Spock, also masquerading as cellophane, pats him on the head.

“I think this will be an educational experience for us all,” Spock leans back with huge self-satisfied smugness. “I am the god of a fifty foot radius. The universe is mine to command.”

All the secrets in the universe and that’s what he says.

No, seriously, how is this his life?

\--

The thing where Ivory the Crotchless demands they become his own personal Space Pirates?

Thats...god, how is this even happening?

\--

There is a lot of not very professional ‘thank god we’re breathing’ fucking and a lot of not filling out paperwork but overall, being vigilante pirates but sorta-kinda really not, works out for them. He does of course have to figure out how to look more ruthless. And or let Chekov run negotiations.

( “And we shall name it Veloci-ropta-copter.”

“Ah, no. No we won’t.”

“Hikaru dear, who is navigating this vessel?”

“You?”

“And who might accidently ‘slip’ and send us into a vortex of never ending pain and misery if we don’t do exactly what he wants?”

“Yeah, uh, new Captain sir, I vote we name the ship Veloci-ropta-copter.”

“As long as you shut the hell up afterward.”)

So, yeah, the story of how they end up on his self aware ship with the federation trying to kill them and a omnipresent being demanding they flit across the universe to fit it’s fancy is a rather long and terror filled one. And that’s not even touching on the things said sparkly being asks for. Wether that be journeying to a planet of large beady eyed octopi that look at Scotty with blatant sexual contemplation or to a place where everything, every-fucking-thing, is made of fairy floss or a planet on which Keenser is the Great Gahmabaloo The Gratuitous, (Needless to say, engineering wasn’t the best place to be after they left that planet. Keenser really held a grudge.)McCoy can at least take solace in the fact that his life will never be boring again.

And that’s not even counting the fact that he’d somehow managed to pick up two ghost lovers who liked to camp out on his bed and fondle each other no matter how tired McCoy was or how fucking much he needed the PADD in the side draw.

You’d think learning the mysteries of the universe would make Jim less of a dick.

“Nah,” Jim mutters as he turns over to bare his ass, “mostly you learn to work around it.”

Spock raises an eyebrow and does that thing where he sort of half smiles which is really unfair because they’re both fucking dead and necrophilia has always been a little to macabre for his taste.  
Both of them get real still for a moment before they flicker and reappear at the big ass window he has in his quarters.

“Well that feels wrong” Jim says as he presses his fingers through the glass.

“Indeed.” Spock replies before stepping out into the stupid blackness of space. Jim follows him and leaves McCoy standing there feeling really kind of inadequate. Sure, he’s not as brilliant in everything sexual as Jim but he can’t be bad enough to make them prefer the cold depths of space.

\--

The other thing wherein Jim and Spock are always in the process of leaving

That...that he should be less used to.

\--

The day starts badly.

First, someone fucked with his coffee. You don’t fuck with his coffee. Second, he’s pretty sure Sulu and Nyota murdered someone again and Chekov, again, is using that one storage cupboard no one likes going near to hide the body. Again. Three, Jim and Spock have not deigned to rematerialise yet which so does not help his feeling of abstract rejection.

The ship makes another one of those obscure beeping noises and McCoy ignores it until Nyota starts making that sound like a motorboat and he gets a little scared she’ll do something crazy like start throwing shit down or, god forbid, cry.

Leaning over he presses the side of the ship. “Attention all you crazy dumbasses, this is your captain. Brace yourself, it’s a Tuesday so someone will probably try to inefficiently murder us and take Chekov as a gift for their heathen god.”

Around the sorta-bridge people mutter that anyone stupid enough to take Chekov was just asking for one of his crazy lovers to kill them, if he didn’t talk you into suicide first.  
McCoy genially gives his entire bridge crew the finger and continues, “And as this is a Tuesday and whoever made my coffee this morning fucked up I’m expecting a double whammy of delightfully horrific gender  
confused Klingons and/or something else new and equally vicious. So be prepared, McCoy out.”

He throws his coffee on the floor. The ship whines and soaks it up.

Nyota turns to look at him, “How old are we today, sir?”

“Shut up. I know what you did last summer.” McCoy grumbles and covers his eyes. So not a good day.

“I took down a government with a pair of stilettos, a singular grenade, three lollipops and a piece of string. Along with my can do tenacity and the hottest body you’ll never see.”

“Been there, seen that. I wasn’t always a captain” he pauses, “I guess we all forget that sometimes. Uhura send out one of those message pulse thingy’s. Look for voices outside your own head.”

“I believe you’re thinking of Scotty sir. I have narcissism, not schizophrenia.”

“Do I look like I care?”

He sighs further into his chair and pretends to read a PADD. Lots of boring days full of inventory. He’d pretty much banned paperwork so long as people told him the shit they needed to get things done. Life  
continues as ordinarily as it ever does until about 2, when he’s sitting down for his afternoon pint of brandy. There’s a whole lot of noise and then a whole lot of nothing at all.

“Captain to anyone, what the fuck?”

 _Hssssssksssshshsfgsaagssasssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssh._

“Thank you, that was an informative answer.” He taps his comm badge “Prachel, Cupcake. One of you stop preening and tell me what’s happening.”

“I do not preen,” comes a crackly irritated voice, Prachel then, “And I would suggest you check engineering. One of your ghosts has been making a real mess.”

The line cuts out and he heads into the heart of the ship. He expects to find a whole lot of engineers being bored and playing poker, after all, the ship really does run herself. What he does find is all the  
engineers standing uncomfortably next to the outer walls and Spock and Jim fiddling with things and the warp core – usually a safe, slightly off pitch deep blue, now streaked with yellow and flashing sickly. The looks he’s getting from the engineers are stuck between extreme worry and disgust. Keenser in particular is looking mighty upset.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh hey, see, there’s this theory from way in the future and we decided we should test it.” Jim smiles and gestures around, “All we gotta do is reverse polarise the warp core for a microsecond and we should be able to create this sort of sinkhole thing. It’ll look really cool.”

Sinkhole. In space.

Right.

“Will it kill anyone?”

Jim rolls his eyes, “Oh come on Bones, live a little.”

Spock twiddles some nobs and writes some stuff. The ship, which is now a constant buzzing in his head, makes a high pitched whine of distress.

“Will it kill anyone?” McCoy grits his teeth as the ship starts begging him to make it stop. A slight pounding hitting him between the eyes every time Spocks fingers graze the console.

“Maybe. If they’re too close they could get sucked in.”

They’re?

“Like us.” He clarifies, hoping maybe stating the obvious will make Jim sit up and take stock of how stupid this is. Jim gives him this blank stare like he knows he should care but he just can’t manage it. He never quite realised how expendable they all must be to Jim now.

The ship makes a loud grunt and stutter.

“Look, I-”

McCoy sighs, “Enough Jim. You can’t do it.”

\--

And that, that would be okay if it was the only time something like that happened.

But-

See this other time, they’re circling a dying star.

McCoy’s freaking out in his head a little. Another dying star. Another chance for everything to go to hell. They have two minutes to get an old platform filled with workers to safety and only the sick and injured have been transferred onboard. It’s the last outpost of an entire species. Everyone’s expression is a tale of nausea. Everyone but Jim and Spock, who, by rights, have every reason to be twice as freaked as the rest of them.

“Sulu what’s our deadline?”

“5 minutes.”

“We don’t have that long.”

“Send the-”

“Captain!” Ensign Lewis, prone to panic attacks but a great navigator if he can keep his head, yells in a panicked voice, “The erosion of the star has exponentially increased. We have to leave now.”  
He turns to Sulu, “How much of the crew are on board.”

“Not enough.” Sulu replies in between Japanese swear words, “Entering warp now, sir.”

The live feed from the station cuts off abruptly and the after echo is a mass of screams and pleas for help. McCoy stalks off the bridge and Prachel slips in before the doors close.

“They did it.” She says, face blotchy and sweat stains creeping up her uniform.

McCoy can’t even pretend he doesn’t know, “Spock and Jim.”

“Yes sir. Kirk made a motion with his fingers at the exact time my readings spiked. I- they looked at me and I just knew. They smiled. They were happy sir. Excited even. Kirk asked if Mr Spock thought the show was funny. Like it was all some fucking joke-” The lifts open and a lieutenant steps onto the lift, they’re silent until he gets off a floor later, “Mr Spock said something to him just as we entered warp.”

“And?”

She hesitates, eyes downcast before she lets out a shaky laugh, “It’s not worth repeating sir.”

She exits on the next level and he exits on the one after. Spock and Jim are lying on his bed smiling at each other and stretching a cosmos to breaking point between their hands. McCoy has a flash from his younger days, of sitting in a seminar on sociopaths and a picture of a stretched, burnt cat on a screen. The first sign, the caption underneath that twisted memoriam had read, of something gone terribly wrong.

\--

He could forgive that too, even though he had to explain to the sick and dying that there were barely 50 of their race left and god was he ever sorry, he could forgive that too if it had been the last time something like that had happened.

It isn’t. On planet 23 of their great cosmic trip several people get captured. There is, apparently, a rather vicious civil war going on between one political faction that greatly resembles orang-utans and one that look like manatees. McCoy screams himself blue all over trying to get them free. Jim and Spock pop in and out of this plane of existence as they see fit rarely being helpful over the three days of special hell that follow. He gets used to being woken up after thirty minutes of fitful sleep to solve another emergency. What he doesn’t expect, and he should after nearly a year of travelling the stars like this, is to be woken up to attend a conference with the political faction who have his people. He also doesn’t expect to be shot in the shoulder.

He hits the ground hard, pressing his palm to the wound to keep pressure.

Three flashes of light and the orang-utan who shot him is writhing on the ground in agony. Spock appears a moment later and the orang-utan man drops dead. Spocks eyes swivel to the next orang-utan man.

“That’s enough.” McCoy spits while a medic bonds his shoulder.

“You are hurt.” Spocks voice is empty, no inflection, just a bunch of waves on a spectrum.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Fine is unacceptable.” He flattens out his palm and raises it. The earth begins to shake as it rises up. The orang-utan man starts to wail.

“Jesus! Stop!” McCoy grabs on to a nearby structure to support himself. Spock raises an eyebrow and extends towards the orang-utan man. He starts to shake and shift like the earth did.

“What are you doing?”

“I have always wanted to see how evolution happens. Now I am. If I advance this barbaric species forward enough, will it learn the errors of its ways?”

The- god, he doesn’t even look like one anymore, orang-utan man’s body shudders and looks ready to split in two. Finally it stops and the tangled mess of limbs lies on the floor.

“I guess you can’t teach a dumb animal.” Jim says from behind him. They disappear again, like always, and McCoy stays for a long while after his people are safe and back on his ship. He looks at the mess of tangled limbs and thinks- is this the second sign or an extension of the first?

\--

The third time something like that happens Chekov finds him lying against the charred and crumbling remains of a civilization still holding the hand of a charred corpse, the woman he slept with the night before. He hands him a bottle and says, “I was standing next to them when we were trying to save the people on that station. He smiled and twirled his finger. He just, he couldn’t see why we tried to save them, he said that everything dies and why does it matter if I bunch of-.” He chokes himself off and in the silence McCoy thinks that whoever and whatever he brought back, the few moments of warmth he stole weren’t worth it.

McCoy lets out a breath, “You could be wrong.” You could be wrong, he says to Chekov who's holding the hand of a dead woman in the charred remains of a house burnt down in a fit of pique by Jim.

Chekov looks up at the sky filled with smoke. “I wish I was.”

\--

The thing is that McCoy isn’t a selfish bastard except for when he is. Where everyone else would boot their all knowing asses off the ship, he makes excuses and does his best not to lament his frequently cold bed and colder greetings. He watches as Jim and Spock forget what it was to be human. Watches everything he loved about them slip away. He lost them once and is sitting here watching it all crumble again.

“They just keep leaving.”

Nyota looks at him and the beach and the sunset behind them. Sulu is organising the cargo onto the ship. It’s their last quiet moment for months. She sighs long and quiet.

“We all owe you something and it looks like I’ll be the only one to say it.” she rifles around in her bag for awhile to find a piece of paper and a pen. She leans away so he can’t see what she scribbles. She hands it to him and says goodbye. McCoy sits there, mulling the words over in his head till the sun sets and the water cools around his ankles.

\--

‘Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.

These, our bodies, possessed by light.

Tell me we’ll never get used to it.’

Let them go, love. Just let them go.

\--

When he finally manages to get back to his quarters Jim and Spock are sitting on his bed watching the stars flash by. They have their hands clasped together between them. McCoy takes one long, measuring glance and leaves immediately. He heads to Medbay and looks for a bottle of sleeping pills. After a moment he realises that Chapel has completely reorganised the entire medbay. He has no idea where anything is anymore.

When he finally remembers what happened after that it will be three hours later and Prachel’s pale face looking at him. He will have a bottle of whiskey in his hand and the other hand on his heart. It beats twice as fast under his palm and he mentally counts, trying to figure out the rhythm.

“What does it sound like to you?” he asks Prachel, holding her hand to his heart.

She thinks for a moment, “Like the end of an opera. When after everything else there’s this big long note and everyone joins in and then it just stops. It means that after hours of being in love with the singers and their voices and their stories you have to let it go because they can’t come home with you. It’s not bad because you can always have another story afterward and that story could be just as great but to get there you need to stop singing that note. I thi- that’s what you sound like to me.” She removes her hand, “You sound like a song that needs to finish.”  
“You’re really-” he starts, but, then-

Prachel doesn’t even pretend to be surprised when he throws up on her shoes.

\--

Four and a half months of planetary do-dashery later, McCoy is standing face to face with a god again. He talks for what feels like hours about how he was wrong. How he made a bad choice. How he wants to take it back. At the end of it all the god smiles at him.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, really sure.”

He pauses, “You’ll forget about it. You’ll go back and make the choice again; you’ll rewrite history over that. From the moment they died till right this second will have never happened. They will be completely erased from that part of your life.”

McCoy nods.

The god smiles wider, the birth of a civilization caught in his teeth, “Much better choice.”

Then he snaps his fingers and they all go backwards through time.

\--

That one moment comes around again.

McCoy begins to make a choice, a joke, a sarcastic comment.

Then a voice pushes in and whispers that maybe this time he should make another less selfish choice. He changes the deal and asks for something unexpected. He asks to watch.

Kirk has a father this time around, Spock has a mother. They meet when they’re 23, they marry at 36, they live till something ridiculous. McCoy watches and sighs and lets their story close on him. Stitches up the universes and leaves his ghost lovers to a fairytale.

He’ll never be who he was before but he can probably sleep easier.

The rest is anti-climactic. The big glowy dude hands them a bunch of sparkly rings and rushes them off. The ship picks them up and they plot a course according to the list they were given. Chekov puts on the eyepatch and still manages to look like a rent boy. Uhura cuts her hair to a choppy bob and takes up an affair with Scotty. Chapel pretends she doesn’t know about said affair. McCoy, well, he has a ship now. He has a lot of things and they aren’t so bad. They’re just not...what he expected. It hurts but not like before when he thought it would kill. It’s distant now, like a dying star he can watch from behind a screen. Five months later he sees Johanna again and 18 months after that she takes up residence on the Veloci-Ropta-Coptar.

Three years and twelve days later and McCoy can clearly remember Spock and Jim as ghosts. For some of the others, it simply never happened. Another two years and twenty two days after that the only people who remember the truth about what McCoy did, the choices he made are him, Chekov and Nyota. Even then, only just.

Ten years, five months, fourteen days. The cusp of Joanna’s birthday and he forgets about gods of a fifty foot radius, experiments gone wrong and just remembers Jim and Spock and every flaw in between them and their descent into a star.

As McCoy lets go, so does the universe.


End file.
